AURORA, Ill. 
In the second-floor bedroom where he used to sleep, the son sat alone on a bed holding a Bible and a picture of his deceased grandmother.

That is where the mom found him late on the afternoon of April 25, awaiting his selection on the first day of the NFL draft.

“I'm so thankful,” the son said, looking up.

He spoke of growing up and of his family that helped him.

“All this made me the man I am today,” he said.

The son's future was upon him, and he crossed the room to wrap his arms around his mother.

“It's all going to be OK,” he told her.

In the middle of the embrace, with a downstairs full of people, the son's phone buzzed.

He answered and heard the voice of Chargers Vice President Ed McGuire. Then General Manager A.J. Smith came on the line.

After some small talk and joking, Smith said, “Congratulations, you're a San Diego Charger.”

Larry English's plan had come to fruition, appropriately, with him in his mother's grasp.

Larry English is a professional football player, just as expected.

He knows the single-mindedness of his focus was in a way foolhardy – “considering the odds,” he said – but it was a plan that was real and unwavering (and along the way he got a college degree, too).

“I always saw this as my goal,” he said of playing in the NFL. “I never saw myself doing anything else. I feel fortunate I was right, looking back. It might not have been the most educated plan, but I'm glad I felt that way about it. Having that confidence helped me.”

It's a plan that took root in a hardscrabble but picture-pretty town of Aurora, Ill., about 40 miles west of Chicago, where a mom had a plan of her own.

The mom gives credit to so many – grandparents and teachers and coaches. The son is thankful for that support system as well.

But he makes it clear there was a force at the center of his universe.

“It was mostly my mom,” English said. “She put us before things she might have wanted.”

The only thing Susan English wanted was for her two children to grow up right.

From the time she was pregnant with Larry, Susan knew that would be her calling.

“I just made a commitment,” she said. “I know you don't bargain with God, but . . . I said, 'Lord, if you will give me healthy children, I will do everything I can to make sure they're raised up in your light.' ”

Through two marriages, always with a full-time job, she has by all accounts never stopped working to fulfill that pledge.

In the aftermath of making English the 16th overall pick, the Chargers decision-makers spoke of a player who could help improve their defense, a relentless pass rusher and a smart kid.

Chargers Player Personnel Director Jimmy Raye said, “The guy has no flies on him. No trouble, just a character guy.”

And in the midst of a green, wet Illinois spring, you find out why.

When Susan and Larry English Sr. divorced 14 years ago, Susan said Larry Sr. told her he wasn't paying for the children's private school anymore.

So, during the summer before Larry Jr. entered fifth grade, Susan knew she had to find a less expensive school for her son and daughter Monica, who is five years younger than Larry. She will follow him to Northern Illinois University this fall.

One afternoon, while gardening, Susan decided she would visit St. Rita of Cascia. In her overalls, without taking much time to dust off the soil, she visited the tiny Catholic school and fell in love with the principal and talk of all that would be demanded from her children there.

“It was wonderful,” Susan said.

Her smile turned into a laugh as she added, “The kids didn't think it was wonderful.”

Principal Elizabeth Faxon recalled Larry as “very quiet, very shy.” And, she said, it took awhile for him to adjust academically.

“He came here in fifth grade,” Faxon said. “That's a tough time to make a transition. He had some work to do, but he always lived up to his family's expectations.”

At St. Rita's, students received weekly progress reports. In sixth grade, Larry brought home a report that contained a “D.” He had been told that would be trouble. That day, Susan warned that another such grade would mean he was off the basketball team.

A month later, a progress report contained a “D.” As promised, Larry's basketball season was over.

An agitated basketball coach called the English home.

“Do you know what this does to the team?” he asked Susan.

“Do you know that Larry is in school for his education?” Susan replied.

Laughing in a way that has been described as infectious, Susan said, “Oh my gosh, I was the worst mom in the world.”

But, she added, “From that point on I never had any problems.”

By eighth grade, English spent four quarters on the honor roll.

English's high school coaches at Marmion Academy recalled that Larry wasn't the best student when he arrived, but he spent the final two years on the honor roll at the demanding military school.

Faxon, seated behind her desk at St. Rita's, nodded toward an adjacent room where Susan English was holding court.

“That,” Faxon said, “is an amazing woman.”

Faxon would later walk into the room where Susan was telling a story about the time in high school when Larry suffered a neck stinger but refused to wear a protective collar at the next practice.

Susan English walked into the coach's office with the collar and told him her son had to wear it. The coach yelled at Larry. The collar went on.

Upon hearing the end of the story, Faxon said with a chuckle, “We're all a little bit scared of you, Susan.”

It won't be Susan English playing linebacker for the Chargers in 2009.

It will be her 6-foot-2, 255-pound son, who took a cue early from the mom who wouldn't be stopped.

“The biggest thing I got from her was her commitment and work ethic,” English said. “She doesn't stop. For real. It's funny, people talk about my game and my motor. Part of that comes from her. She's going to do whatever it takes. She really doesn't stop.”

English was twice the Mid-American Conference MVP during a career in which he accumulated 31½ sacks and 63 tackles for loss at Northern Illinois. English also got his degree.

With a strong week in January at the Senior Bowl, he showed that the midlevel MAC competition was not the reason for his big numbers. He scored an impressive 34 on the Wonderlic test at the NFL Scouting Combine, and when his 40-yard dash time there wasn't top-flight he changed his plans, went to speed camp and knocked almost two-tenths of a second off the time at his Pro Day a month later.

The kid gets it and gets it done. Always has.

Months shy of beginning his rookie season, he has the body of a veteran.

Pictures in Susan English's home show a progression during Larry's junior year, when football coach and biology teacher Tony Tinerella introduced the concept of nutrition.

Always a monster – at least one opposing team in junior high nicknamed him “Scary Larry” – he went from chubby kid to lean machine his junior year. At team functions in high school, coaches said English would pass on fatty foods. His snacks between classes were celery and carrots.

“Lean muscle mass,” is a phrase Susan English has heard a thousand times from her son if she heard it once.

After basketball practice at Marmion, English would ask coach Pat McNamara to open the weight room more days than not. He was the league's basketball MVP as a senior, a 6-foot-1 center.

McNamara has told English he was “probably the least-skilled player to ever be co-MVP of that league.”

Said McNamara: “But he knew what to do with the ball. And, of course, he was not afraid to bang with anybody.”

Tinerella, the varsity coach at Marmion during English's time at the all-boys school, had been hearing about this “monster” freshman the summer of 2000.

The coach finally made it to the weight room one day when the freshmen were working out. He couldn't wipe the smile from his face.

“Son, what do you want from football?” Tinerella asked English that day.

“Coach, I want to be in the NFL,” the kid replied.

Recalled Tinerella: “A lot of people say that, but you could see then that God had given him the tools.”

English left Marmion having twice been named the Suburban Catholic Conference MVP on a mediocre team. English was a middle linebacker. But often, he was ostensibly the team's only linebacker, as Tinerella eventually instituted a 4-1 defense, rushing his front four as English patrolled the middle.

“Nobody would run inside because of Larry,” Tinerella said.

Moved to defensive end in college, he is a Charger now because of his ability to chase the quarterback. In San Diego, he will play with Shawne Merriman, who is nicknamed “Lights Out” because of his propensity to knock out players in high school.

While English didn't have the flashy nickname, he could deliver a blow.

“He'd hit kids and put them parallel to the ground,” Tinerella said. “Defensive coaches love big hits. But there were times Larry would hit a guy and I would actually say out loud, 'Oh my God, I hope that kid is OK.' ”

At his introductory news conference the day after he was drafted, English addressed a room of people as if he were born to do it.

Rare is the 23-year-old who can work a crowd that way. Of course, rare is the kid whose formative years were spent at a strict Catholic middle school and an all-boys military high school run by monks.

“That's a tough school,” McNamara said of Marmion. “They work 'em.”

And rarer probably is the son of a single mom whose middle school principal recalls this: “That's the kind of family we like to see. His roots were fixed very early.”

While Susan worked full time, her parents filled in as chauffeurs, tutors and mentors. Even with her workload, Susan was, by the recollection of teachers and coaches, at every event.

For all the praise of his athletic prowess from those who knew him growing up, there is much more talk of the kid who grew up right under the mom who made sure of it.

“She put us before things she might have wanted,” Larry English said. “It makes me even more happy now. With my success, it paid off, all she did. My success as a person. The football is a great accomplishment, but more than that, what was more important to her was making me a man. And she did a good job.”